Sunday, July 29, 2012

The Dark Knight Rises - Second take (2012)

In Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns comic,
Lana Lang is attempting to defend Batman: "We live in theshadow of crime . . . with the
unspoken understanding that we are victims-of fear, of violence, of social
impotence. A man has risen to show us that the power is, and always has been in
our hands. We are under siege - He's showing us that we can resist."It's an important point, one
that has seemed crucial to Christopher Nolan's take on the Batman universe. The
idea here in those lines is about transferring some amount of autonomy to the
citizens of Gotham city - "the power
is, and always has been in our hands".
More on that in a bit.

It's a bit hard - nay
impossible - to be completely objective about a movie series if you've been the
kind of fan that Nolan's Batman films made you.
If you were a proud comic book nerd, you gushed at the ways the movies
had paid homage to different parts of the canon, ultimately weaving in a new
narrative that stands proudly aside the best of what DC has to offer. And if
you were just the regular cinemagoer, you marvelled at the complexity of the
narrative, the brilliance of the performances, the sheer thrill value of the
movies.

The problem with being a fan
is that it becomes particularly difficult to write a review resembling anything
approaching balance. I sensed fleeting moments of disappointment within myself
while watching the Dark Knight Rises, and yet when a friend began dissing the
movie as we walked out, the rabid fan in me took over. You will not dismiss this movie, the fan said, you will acknowledge the brilliance of Nolan's vision, you will
accept that this is the best conclusion to a motion picture trilogy yet, you
will ... you get the drift. But over
the days that have passed since I saw the movie, it is that mild disappointment
that has festered and grown, not the admiration for the parts that worked.

Try as I might, I have been
unable to love The Dark Knight Rises the way I loved some of its individual parts,
or the way I loved its predecessors. So what
did I appreciate?

One part of Bane's plan: the
idea of having Gotham cut off from the external world and be forced to retreat
into a Hobbesian state of nature. The fact that it must face this, its greatest
challenge punctuated the absence of Batman, and also the absence of its state sanctioned
law enforcers. To the extent the movie focuses on that, its conflicts are
grandiose, its stakes never higher.

Anne Hathaway: Her Selina Kyle
takes pride of place in the canon of magnetic characters Nolan has etched out.
Every line reading she does is delicious, and every time she's on screen, the
movie fires up with a vitality it lacks otherwise.

The sheer spectacle: Except
for the opening sequence which was filmed in a curiously flat manner, the set
pieces in this finale upstage anything that's come before by a long shot. The
mid-movie football field implosion is fantastic, as is the frenetic final half
hour.

But then, there is the question of what the movie does
to Gotham city. This has been a series as much about the battle for Gotham's
soul as it has been about Bruce Wayne's.
The Dark Knight crystallized this by giving us the two standout sequences
of the series - and perhaps cinema as a whole.
There was the terrible choice that the citizens of the city had to make
as they sat on two explosives-laden ferry boats; and there was the choice that
Batman has to make when he finds out the lives of Rachel Dawes and Harvey Dent
are in imminent danger. The citizens
make the ethical choice despite all indications to the contrary (of course
Batman himself is on shakier ground here, but that's another story). Despite
the Joker's best efforts, he is unable to tilt the citizenry into anarchy, thus
also proving something essential: Gotham
is a city worth saving. The League of Shadows might have believed it was
beyond hope, and the Joker may believe it is beyond hope, but the citizens by
choosing to not press the trigger prove them wrong. They take, as Lana Lang
would say, some amount of power into their hands. Social order prevails.

Cut to The Dark Knight Rises.
The ferry-boat thought experiment has now been in a way expanded to include all
of Gotham within its ambit. Anarchy reigns wide in the city - but not quite.
There is also the fascistic regime of the Scarecrow presided
"sentencing" court, where the only sentence is, effectively, death. Across the city, the 99% seem to resort
to thuggery and looting (thanks for demonizing the Occupy movement guys!). The
law enforcers are of course trapped underground, until they're rescued for the
final standoff.

Who are they and Batman
fighting for? For a city that's content to finish itself off, bomb or no bomb?
For a citizenry that is unable to raise its voice, take a stand, open its doors
to kindness, demonstrate some sense of an ethical compass? I don't know where the Gotham of the last
movie disappeared to, but it's not on display here. Unlike the Dark Knight, the
city doesn't earn its salvation.

While my biggest gripe with
the Dark Knight Rises is its (mis)treatment of Gotham, there's also the fact of
its alarmingly ham-handed dialogue - poor Michael Caine is saddled with a
clunky bit of exposition which he is required to deliver through blubbering
tears. Then there is that disappointingly conventional idea of a nuclear bomb
serving as the plot driver, devolving into an annoyingly familiar race against
the clock. Batman's ultimate enemy is really chaos and anarchy - to saddle the
conclusion of this trilogy of ideas with such a stock Hollywood device feels
like a failure of ambition. Also, Bane?
Doesn't work. After the physical fear toxins of the first and the mind games of
the second, to have it all come down to a question of sheer brawn?

That said, the movie still
works as a conclusion to the arc of Batman/Bruce Wayne. "If you make yourself
more than just a man, if you devote yourself to an ideal, you become something
else entirely. Are you ready to begin?". That's the
challenge Ra's al-Ghul puts before him early in Batman Begins, and that's a
theme that has echoed through the trilogy. The Bruce Wayne who was ready to
shoot his parents' murderer in cold blood has disappeared, replaced by a man
who refuses to engage in retribution, to a man ready to sacrifice everything
for his beloved city, and finally, a man who comes full circle. As we leave
him, he's able to close one journey and pass on his identity to another.

Gotham, as we say
goodbye to it, still needs Batman. But Bruce Wayne, finally, doesn't.

Look, it still works. It works spectacularly as a comic book movie in general, it works perfectly as a Batman story in particular, and it is just about serviceable as a conclusion to this fantastic series of films. But, to echo the words of
Commissioner Gordon, the Dark Knight Rises is not the movie I needed it to be.
Maybe, with the over-high expectations, it's the one I deserved?

1 comment:

Nice review. I agree that the explicit message of Batman was counter-revolutionary/anti-Occupy (though I'm sure one could read between the lines). There's one piece you left out, though, that made all the anarchy in Gotham a little more palpable/interesting to me: Bane's somewhat Joker-esque determination to show people hope so that they could fully experience their inevitable demise. I thought that was an interesting idea that they toyed with.